Hot Ice (47 page)

Lisa Maki had been instructed by the Black Rose herself to hold her people back, and to wait in Blikiesfontein for her signal. Although it made sense for T-FLAC to do Black Rose's grunt work for them, she hadn't enjoyed the wait. They'd observed the vehicles and choppers converging on the African village a few miles away, and her heart had pounded with anticipation.

She and her group were eager to go in, kick some butt, and stake Black Rose's claim to the power and glory of
Mano del Dios
.

Finally it was time.

By the time Lisa and her group arrived down on the lower level of the mine, it was almost impossible to see anything. The cavern was filled with choking smoke. Small fires burned, then jumped and spread among the wooden crates, and men lay dead or dying across the floor. Through the veils of thick, gray smoke, the sight of the missile—enormous and eerily white—made Lisa's breath catch.

No guns, the Black Rose had warned. Made sense with the missile, the Black Rose's ultimate prize, projecting through the floor like a giant white penis. Besides, Lisa much preferred hand-to-hand with her Nepalese-commando, Khukri, crescent-shaped combat knife. She preferred the intimacy of knife fighting. It was fast, fluid, and lethal.

The curved amari hilt fit comfortably in her hand as she fondled it, looking into the mass of humanity before her. The gleaming, well-honed, nine-and-a-half-inch steel blade was like an old friend. They'd done some fine work together. Lisa smiled. Slashing and stabbing were made simple with a good knife, but the Khukri also did
a fine
job of decapitation.

T-FLAC or the
Mano
. Both enemies would feel the slice of her blade. She couldn't wait.

She motioned her people into place. The men and woman she'd been given awaited her signal. Lisa felt a surge of power so profound it was almost sexual. She smiled. "Let's show
Mano del Dios
and T-FLAC who just joined the party."

Chapter Fifty-one

"St. John?" One of Daklin's men, Hunt thought, as the kid came running full-tilt toward him.

Hunt swiped a hand across his smoke-streaked face as he pulled the guy aside behind the temporary shelter of a crate of AK-47s. "Talk." Jesus, they were hiring them young. The operative, redheaded and freckle-faced, looked about twelve. A scared twelve at that. He was probably twenty, Hunt thought, and an MIT protégé.

"We went down the assembly launch tower. The warhead weighs in excess of twenty-three percent of the missile's weight…"

As he listened, Hunt scanned the scene before him. Fires had sprung up everywhere. His people were attempting to put them out as fast as possible using the fire hoses they'd found somewhere. Putting out fires and fighting off
Mano del Dios
. Both formidable tasks.

The lights flickered off, on, off, then on again.

Jesus. The kid had run hell-bent for leather across the combat zone to bring him a message, and now was having trouble getting to the point. "Where's your headset?" he asked, interrupting.

"Daklin made us… It was distracting—"

"Message? What's the bottom line?" Hunt demanded, watching the action behind Daklin's guy.

"We've crossed it, sir.
We've fucking crossed it
. With that weight—ah, geez—it gives it an effective large kill envelope, and the highest lethality against soft-skin targets. Oh, fuck. Oh, God. Oh, shit. Las Vegas is screwed real bad. Sir."

Soft-skin targets. So, it wasn't a nuke that would have taken out buildings as well as people. The payload was chemical. Fuck. "How long will it take your team to destroy the guidance chips and deactivate the bloody thing?" Hunt asked calmly.

The kid was still hyperventilating. "Four hours, Daklin said."

"Remind him he has seventy-six minutes.
Move
."

The kid's eyes widened, his Adam's apple bobbed, then he turned and hauled ass, weaving and dodging through the mayhem. He disappeared into the smoke and flames.

"Morales," a voice said through his earpiece. "ETA fourteen minutes."

"Good man," Hunt murmured into the voice-activated mic. "South entrance Level Seven."

"Affirmative."

Hunt quickly transmitted the information to his team leaders.

Through ribbons of drifting gray smoke, he scanned the vast area. It was a beautiful sight, watching the black-clad T-FLAC operatives whip Morales's goons…

But
that
wasn't one of Morales's people.

Hunt's eyes narrowed as he recognized two more faces. Both ID'd by T-FLAC as Black Rose terrorists.

Excellent, he thought with satisfaction, spotting several more Black Rose members. Two tangos for the price of one. That expedited things. The two groups were hard to ID as separate groups. Not that it mattered now.

Dead, they'd be easy to identify. Sometimes they had to see their bodies to be sure. The Black Rose members all wore the tattooed rose on their backs.

Things were shaking down nicely. He passed Savage, her red hair streaming loose and wild around her shoulders. A small, vengeful smile curved her mouth as she crouched, throwing her knife from hand to hand as she and one of Morales's men circled each other. She'd unzipped her suit down to her waist, and her bare breasts threatened to spill out. A calculated distraction she enjoyed. Savage was very good with misdirection, and even better with that Ka-bar. He knew the guy didn't stand a chance.

Three men rushed Hunt simultaneously. One of the aspects Hunt enjoyed most about his job was hand-to-hand combat. Usually, he didn't get many opportunities. A fast bullet was far more expedient. But presented with this opportunity, he took it.

As the man closest to him came in, Hunt, keeping his arms tight to his body, extended his leg with a smooth snapping motion, connecting squarely in the center of his opponent's chest. The man went flying into the guy directly behind him, and they both went balls-up, skating along the cement floor.

The third man came with fists raised. Using the momentum from the last kick, Hunt rotated at the hip, kicking the inside of his opponent's leg, at the same time grabbing the front of the man's shirt, taking him down to the floor in a quick, smooth sweep.

Controlling his opponent by the arm, Hunt did a front kick to the man's knee, preventing him from rolling out of the way. The crack of the bone was almost lost in the noise around them. The man shrieked, trying to rise. Hunt stomped his head. He lay still.

He quickly stripped the fallen man of his weapons, then tossed the gun and knife to a T-FLAC man who'd just neutralized his own opponent. Just in time, Hunt saw, as he half turned, a blonde woman coming at him at a run.

She advanced, wielding a Gurkha Khukri fighting knife with skill and speed. He could see she knew her way around a knife, but then, so did he.

Not one of Morales's, he thought, crouching, Ka-bar dancing from hand to hand as she came closer. Morales had no women in any of his cells. So the Black Rose had sent in their own people to try and take the
Mano del Dios
ordnance and missile before Morales blew everything to hell and gone.

When he'd first started working for T-FLAC, Hunt had loathed taking on a woman, especially in hand-to-hand combat. It went against everything in him to hurt a woman. He'd gotten over that aversion pretty damn fast when a female terrorist attempted to cut off his balls ten years ago.

A terrorist was a terrorist was a terrorist. No matter if they had the face of a pug dog or, like this woman, looked as sweet and angelic as the girl next door. Sunny ponytail bouncing innocently, she came at him with that lethal knife, knowing, as he did,
exactly
where to cut to kill.

The stomach was where most people aimed. It was usually unprotected and the biggest meaningful target. Not to mention that the thought of receiving a gut wound terrified people. Hunt preferred the carotid. He didn't toy with his opponents. If he had a weapon in his hand, his intention was a quick kill.

They danced around each other, knives flashing and slashing. She was small and light. He was more experienced and a hell of a lot faster.

He arced his arm high and brought it down in a blur of silver. She glided around his hip and lunged. The sharp blade of the Khukri curved up, slicing painlessly into his side. He chopped at her wrist with the side of his hand. Her fingers loosened on the hilt but she managed to catch the knife in her other hand.

Hunt tossed his blade to his left hand as well. She backed up. He advanced. They circled each other, orange flames dancing along their blades, smoke billowing and eddying in their wake as they moved.

She stumbled up against a stack of crates and her eyes went wide. "Please don't hurt me," she begged, knife hand dropping to her side. Blood from her slashed arm dripped on the floor beside her Nikes as she stood panting, fear stark on her face.

Face
. Not eyes.

Hunt anticipated the move a split second before she lunged. He shifted, letting her momentum carry her. He spun and cut down fast and sure. She grunted as the blade sliced deep into her knife arm. She feinted left. Unlike the blonde, Hunt wasn't utilizing only his knife. His entire body was involved as he twisted away from her lunge, brought his left leg up, over her knife hand, and connected his booted foot to her temple.

She dropped like a stone. He bent to relieve her of the Khukri, then slipped it into the sheath strapped to his right thigh.

He heard a faint voice, and realizing that his earpiece had slipped, reinserted it. "Talk."

"Morales awaits your pleasure."

"On my way." He turned to see Savage, who'd dispatched her own opponent. "Take care of this, would you?" he said, nudging the blond with his booted foot.

"I live to do garbage detail," she grumbled, but grabbed the other woman by the shoulders and started dragging her to a tightly guarded holding area several hundred yards off to the side.

"Daklin?" Navarro's voice sounded in Hunt's ear.

Radio silence. Then an unfamiliar voice. "He says don't talk to him, for fuck sake. He's busy!" Then Daklin's mic was disconnected.

Fair enough. Hunt didn't want anyone distracting Daklin either.

He glanced at his watch. Forty-seven minutes to detonation.

Chapter Fifty-two